Sunday, April 6, 2008

How to Make Gluten Free Bagels

**UPDATE: Make sure to read the revised boiling method for this recipe located here.**

When I was growing up, other than a bowl of grits or oatmeal, my favorite breakfast was a bagel. We ate LOTS of bagels. I'm not sure how my parents came to love a bagel. They certainly didn't eat them growing up, but somewhere along the way, they became dedicated bagel fans!

My favorite bagels were the savory type: Garlic and Onion, Poppy seed, Sesame seed, the "Everything" bagel, etc... I liked the sweet bagels okay... but I LOVED the savory. And I slathered them with cream cheese.

It's safe to say since I've been gluten free, I have not encountered one store bought gluten free bagel that I have really enjoyed. Not once.

But this weekend I felt bold! I've been a member of the Daring Baker's for several months and one thing these fab bakers have taught me is not to be afraid of a challenge!

So, we made bagels! We made LOTS of bagels! And they are GOOD my friends! If you have missed a "soft,chewy on the inside, and hot, crispy on the outside" bagel.... these are for you! They do take a little time and effort, but are really fun to make! I hope you will give them a try! Here is my step-by-step tutorial!

How To Make Gluten Free Bagels

Have your recipe handy!

You can print the recipe here or view the recipe at the bottom of this post.

Put hot water on to boil, add several tsp. of salt. Keep the water boiling while you are preparing your bagel dough.

Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. To quickly bring eggs to room temperature, place them in a bowl of warm water and let sit for about 5 minutes.

Warm milk to 120 degrees (this takes about 1 minute and 10 seconds in my microwave on high.) Make sure to measure temperature with a cooking thermometer. Yes, I used a meat thermometer! I'm too cheap to buy another cooking thermometer and this one has always measured correctly for me. I know it is at 120 degrees, because it is right before the first labeled measurement of 130 degrees.

In a small mixing bowl whisk together warmed milk, 2 tbsp. yeast, and 2 tsp. sugar. Set this mixture aside to proof.

While waiting for yeast to proof, in a medium bowl add the binder you prefer (either xanthan gum or chia seed meal and flax seed meal -- with these bagels in particular I used chia seed meal and flax seed meal). To the binder, add baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Whisk together well!

Add flours, one at a time by using a dry measuring cup. To properly measure the flour, overfill the measuring cup.

With a butter knife, level off flour, until it is even with the rim of the cup. With starches such as cornstarch and tapioca flour, you may have to add more flour to the top of the measuring cup several times and level off with the knife, before it is properly even with the rim of the cup.

Using your knife, tap the flours out of the measuring cup into your mixing bowl.

When you have added all flours, whisk mixture together thoroughly. If it makes you feel better, feel free to sift all the dry ingredients together. I'm too lazy to sift. Whisk away baby! Set dry ingredients aside.

Now go back and check on your yeast mixture. If it has proofed, it will look puffy and have lots of bubbles like this! If it doesn't look any different than when you started, you need to start the process over again with fresh yeast and fresh milk. But our yeast is proofed and ready to go, so let's continue!

Whisk in eggs, one at a time, to proofed yeast. Add agave nectar. If you are using xanthan gum as your binder, add apple cider vinegar as a dough enhancer. (If you are using chia seed meal and flax seed meal as your binder LEAVE OUT the apple cider vinegar, as it can lesson the gelling and binding properties of both these seeds!!)

Continuing with the paddle on medium speed, add the flour mixture 1/3 cup at a time to the wet mixture, until you have added all the flour.

Continue to mix on medium speed for 5 minutes. A thick dough will form. If you used xanthan gum as your binder, this dough will be extremely sticky! The pictured dough uses chia seed meal and flax seed meal, it is less sticky and much easier to work with.

On a large flat plate or clean surface generously sprinkle sweet rice flour for shaping the dough.

With the wooden spoon, scrap dough from the sides of the mixing bowl into a large ball.

Dust your hands with sweet rice flour and place the dough onto the floured surface.

Continuing to use your hands, gently shape the dough into a large ball.

Gently pull off a small handful of dough and shape it into a disk. Then using your finger, push a hole up through the middle of the disk.

Continue to shape the disk until it looks like a bagel.

Place the shaped bagel back on the floured surface. You should have enough dough for 8 medium sized bagels.

At this point, you can preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Once it has preheated, cut the oven OFF immediately. We will let the bagels rise in the warmed oven after we have boiled them.LET THE BAGELS RISE FIRST BEFORE BOILING!! SEE THIS POST!

ONCE THE BAGELS HAVE RISEN, THEN move to this step!!
Make sure your water is still at a rolling boil. (My water actually should have been hotter than this picture shows!!) Work with ONE bagel at a time. Using a slotted spoon, gently place the bagel into the boiling water bath.

Boil the bagel for 20 seconds (ONLY) on each side. Use the slotted spoon to flip the bagel in the water. Because these bagels do not have gluten holding them together, they can fall apart in the water if you let them boil longer than this!!)

Pull out the boiled bagel and place it on your prepared baking pan. When you pull the bagel out of the water, be extra gentle! The bagel is very fragile now that it has been boiled and almost looks like wrinkled hands after a long warm bath!

Brush the boiled bagels with an egg wash (a mixture of one egg white with 1 tbsp. of water).

Add the toppings you desire. Here, I added poppy seeds, dried onions, sesame seeds, and garlic granules. Place the bagels in the oven to rise for 40 minutes. The bagels will probably not double in size during the rise (BEFORE boiling!), but they will puff up slightly and appear larger than before the rise. Take bagels out of the oven after 40 minutes of rising. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Place bagels back in oven and bake for 15-18 minutes. They will appear golden and crisp when finished baking.

Cool the bagels on a wire rack for 30 minutes before eating (if you can wait that long!)

Slice the bagels in half and spread with cream cheese, or use for sandwiches or mini-pizzas! This bagel is from a dough made with chia seed meal and flax seed meal. At this point, you can slice all the bagels and freeze them for later use.

These 2 bagels are from my first batch made with xanthan gum. The dough was much more sticky and harder to work with than the dough made with chia seed meal, and therefore it was much harder to shape like bagels.

Conclusions:

Both types of bagels are very good! Michael said that he preferred the taste and texture of the bagels made with the xanthan gum. He said they reminded him more of a regular wheat bagel to him. I really liked the bagels made with the chia seed meal and the flax seed meal. They were much easier to work with while shaping, and I thought they tasted very similar to a regular wheat bagel.

I also like knowing that I can make a yeasted bagel both with xanthan gum and another alternative binder such as chia seed meal.

I also made a batch of these bagels using a mixture of chia seed meal and psyllium husk powder. We did not like this batch of bagels as much. The psyllium husk powder has a stronger flavor and affected the overall taste of the bagel. I think I will use psyllium husk powder only in baked goods that have already have a strong distinct flavoring, such as a chocolate muffin. That way, the flavor of the psyllium husk powder wouldn't stand out as much.

** For more information on chia seeds and psyllium powder (what they are, where to buy them, why I'm using them, etc.. ) please visit this post. **

Happy Gluten Free Bagel Making!!

UPDATE:Some readers had trouble opening the PDF link to this recipe at the top of the page. Here is the text version of the recipe just in case, you couldn't print the PDF!

4. Put hot water on to boil, add several tsp. of salt. Keep the water boiling while you are preparing your bagel dough.

5. Make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature. To quickly bring eggs to room temperature, place them in a bowl of warm water and let sit for about 5 minutes.

6. Warm milk to 120 degrees (this takes about 1 minute and 10 seconds in my microwave on high.) Make sure to measure temperature with a cooking thermometer.

7. In a small mixing bowl whisk together warmed milk, 2 tbsp. yeast, and 2 tsp. sugar. Set this mixture aside to proof.

8. While waiting for yeast to proof, in a medium bowl add the binder you prefer (either xanthan gum or chia seed meal and flax seed meal -- with these bagels in particular I used chia seed meal and flax seed meal). To the binder, add baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

9. Add flours, one at a time by using a dry measuring cup. To properly measure the flour, overfill the measuring cup. With a butter knife, level off flour, until it is even with the rim of the cup. With starches such as cornstarch and tapioca flour, you may have to add more flour to the top of the measuring cup several times and level off with the knife, before it is properly even with the rim of the cup. Using your knife, tap the flours out of the measuring cup into your mixing bowl. When you have added all flours, whisk mixture together thoroughly. If it makes you feel better, feel free to sift all the dry ingredients together. I'm too lazy to sift. Whisk away baby! Set dry ingredients aside.

10. Now go back and check on your yeast mixture. If it has proofed, it will look puffy and have lots of bubbles like this! If it doesn't look any different than when you started, you need to start the process over again with fresh yeast and fresh milk. But our yeast is proofed and ready to go, so let's continue!

11. Whisk in eggs, one at a time, to proofed yeast. Add agave nectar. If you are using xanthan gum as your binder, add apple cider vinegar as a dough enhancer. (If you are using chia seed meal and flax seed meal as your binder LEAVE OUT the apple cider vinegar, as it can lesson the gelling and binding properties of both these seeds!!)

13. Continuing with the paddle on medium speed, add the flour mixture 1/3 cup at a time to the wet mixture, until you have added all the flour.

14. Continue to mix on medium speed for 5 minutes. A thick dough will form. If you used xanthan gum as your binder, this dough will be extremely sticky! The pictured dough uses chia seed meal and flax seed meal, it is less sticky and much easier to work with.

15. On a large flat plate or clean surface generously sprinkle sweet rice flour for shaping the dough.

17. With the wooden spoon, scrap dough from the sides of the mixing bowl into a large ball.

18. Dust your hands with sweet rice flour and place the dough onto the floured surface. Continuing to use your hands, gently shape the dough into a large ball.

19. Gently pull off a small handful of dough and shape it into a disk. Then using your finger, push a hole up through the middle of the disk. Continue to shape the disk until it looks like a bagel. Place the shaped bagel back on the floured surface. You should have enough dough for 8 medium sized bagels.

20. At this point, you can preheat your oven to 200 degrees. Once it has preheated, cut the oven OFF immediately. We will let the bagels rise in the warmed oven after we have boiled them.

21. Make sure your water is still at a rolling boil Work with ONE bagel at a time. Using a slotted spoon, gently place the bagel into the boiling water bath.

22. Boil the bagel for 20 seconds (ONLY) on each side. Use the slotted spoon to flip the bagel in the water. Because these bagels do not have gluten holding them together, they can fall apart in the water if you let them boil longer than this!!)

23. Pull out the boiled bagel and place it on your prepared baking pan. When you pull the bagel out of the water, be extra gentle! The bagel is very fragile now that it has been boiled and almost looks like wrinkled hands after a long warm bath!

24. Brush the boiled bagels with an egg wash (a mixture of one egg white with 1 tbsp. of water).

25. Add the toppings you desire. I added poppy seeds, dried onions, sesame seeds, and garlic granules. Place the bagels in the oven to rise for 40 minutes. The bagels will probably not double in size during the rise, but they will puff up slightly and appear larger than before the rise. Take bagels out of the oven after 40 minutes of rising. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Place bagels back in oven and bake for 15-18 minutes. They will appear golden and crisp when finished baking.

26. Cool the bagels on a wire rack for 30 minutes before eating (if you can wait that long!)

27. Slice the bagels in half and spread with cream cheese, or use for sandwiches or mini-pizzas! At this point, you can slice all the bagels and freeze them for later use.

Thanks Carrie, this is great! I tried to make bagels with carol fenster;s recipe, but they fell apart in the boiling water and made such a mess. I just bought some Salba (chia seeds) and am very interested in trying to bake with them. Why do you mix the flax and chia together?

Steve -- These really turned out tasty! The bagels made with the xanthan gum, would probably remind you of the ones you ate as a kid! But they are incredibly hard to work with! But VERY tasty!! If you have free time one day, give them a shot! It was a lot of fun! I plan on making them often!!

Catholic Mommy - I'm so glad you enjoyed this! There isn't really a reason to mix the flax and chia seeds together first, you can mix all the dry ingredients together first, I was just trying to demonstrate what they would look like in the bowl and that I used both of them, not just one or the other! I used both chia seed meal and the ground flax seed for "double" binding power you might say! I think it really helped the dough stay together, especially for the quick boiling bath!

I'm glad you like using healthier flours too! Before I went GF, I used all whole grain flours, so it felt like a step backwards when I first started GF cooking and almost every recipe I came across used only starches and white rice flour. With diabetes and heart disease running strong in my family, I'm trying to get away from depending on this simple starch/carb flours as much. I think you still need to use a little bit for lightness in your baking, but definitely rely on whole grain flours as your base! I love millet!!!

If you cannot find millet flour, you can grind millet seeds in your blender or food processor and make your own flour!!!

Tenille -- LOL I'm so glad you love my plates! They are the plates my grandmother had while i was growing up and they bring back fond memories to me too! When she moved a few months ago, she gave me these old plates and I LOVE them! Michael thinks they are hideous, but they hold such wonderful happy memories for me! I'm pretending they are retro and very cool!!! haha!

Since going GF (three months ago) I've spent a lot more time baking, of course. At first, it was an inconvenience. But now I love it! I appreciate every bite of food I eat. I've done away with mindless eating. That's a good thing!

Carrie - I'm SO impressed with your bagels! I love bagels, but find the store-bought ones to be way too sweet. I haven't been brave enough to try making them, but with your step-by-step photos, I should be able to give it a try. :)

And I think my interview went well. Lunch was no problem at all. The waiter was great and it turned out one of the people I went with has a brother who has celiac.

I know what you mean. Before we went GF we almost always had whole grains, and ate all organic food. When i started looking at cookbooks for GF baking, I just couldn't bear to bake those foods. They seem so devoid of nutrients... like wonder bread or twinkies. I'm used to sprouted grain flax bread, and whole wheat cookies LOL. I haven't bought any gf cookbooks because they all seem to be full of starches.

Kay -- I'm so glad you liked the bagel tutorial!! I'd love to know how they turn out for you if you try them!! I TOTALLY know what you mean about baking... I want to bake everyday now, even though my waistline doesn't agree with me!! I really LOVE gluten free baking! I have learned SO much!!

Karen - I'm SO glad your interview went well! That is so neat that one of the people with you had a relative. Boy that makes things easier! I knew things would go well! I know you can make these bagels! If you can make pasta.... you will be a bagel queen!! ;-)

Catholic Mommy -- I TOTALLY get ya girl!! i know what you mean! I actually did buy about 3 cookbooks, but I was so shocked that most of the recipes contained only starches and simple carbs. Fortunately, many of those recipes can be revamped with whole grains!! That is the beautiful part of gluten free baking! It is one big fun experiment! i had no idea how much fun science could be! But I am LOVING it!!

Carrie ~ Thank you, thank you! I can't wait to try these. I've tried two other GF bagel recipes and they were complete disasters. There just is something encouraging about seeing photos all the way through a complex recipe like this that makes me want to believe that the third time's a charm! (Plus it helps to hear a real person say that they actually taste good and post the photos to prove that it worked!) This one is definitely going in my recipe box. A good GF bagel recipe was on my recipe wish list :) A million thanks!

Carrie - I finally branched out and bought some millet flour. Aren't you proud of me? I'll make something with it this week and let you know how it goes.

I had the best bread (store-bought, even) when I was in Australia. It was a whole-grain bread with seeds and nutty things in it. But it was also very moist and held together much better than a lot of gf bread. Maybe we can all try to figure something out together.

Karen -- You go girl!! I LOVE millet flour! I think it's just about replaced brown rice flour for me (and i think it's a llot healthier! I get tired of the taste of brown rice flour all the time!)

You should try the millet flat bread I posted earlier this week or use it in place of part of the rice flour in your favorite bread recipes! I've used millet in pizza crust, sweet breads, cookies, french bread (i used it in place of some rice flour in your recipe!), etc... it's very versatile! I think you will LOVE it!!

The bagels look fab, Carrie! Question: I'm looking to limit the starch content of the bread I make to a few tbsp. per cup of whole grain flour. I've been successful in some recipes, though not as successful in others. How low, starch-wise, do you think these yummy-looking bagels could go?

Kara -- I completely understand wanting to eliminate starches! I tried for a while to completely eliminate starches from my baking... but it just didn't work for me! Everything I came up with was rock hard and heavy.

Unfortunately I haven't experimented with this recipe enough to know how much of the starches to eliminate! I think you could certainly just try to swap the whole grain flour you desire with the cornstarch or tapioca flour, but I would use LESS than the amount of cornstarch, for example 3/4 cup of cornstarch... I would use say 1/2 cup millet flour or sorghum flour.

I made these bagels with more starches than I really prefer because I knew those starches would give the bagels a more soft, chewy texture, like the old wheat bagels I was used too!

Another bagel recipe I want to try, which is chock full of whole grain gluten free goodness is Gluten Free Girl's:

WoW! This is an amazing article! The detail, and photo-accompanied instructions are top-notch. Thanks so much for putting the time into this one. It's been a long time since I've been able to enjoy a good bagel, and now I know exactly how to satisfy that breakfast craving:)

It IS an amazing article and so much care in providing step by step instructions. Thanks!

My only addition to your excellent recipe using flaxseed is, for myself, I use Rejuv! for my flaxseed meal. It comes easy to measure and has added value of flax hull lignans which are concentrated. Great antioxidant and packed with Omega-3s. Easy to cook with. I order it exclusively from http://www.rejuvnow.com

I use it daily in my smoothies. I've done the research and it is the best and superior to the flaxseed meal you get at a local health food store or enlightened grocers.

I realize this recipe has been up for awhile, but wanted to mention we made these a few days ago and they are fantastic and freeze wonderfully!! We live in a small town that doesn't carry other grains, so I used amarynth instead of millet and it worked beautifully. Thanks for posting this!!

Hi Wendy!! I'm so glad you liked this recipe and the bagels worked for you!! It's one of my favorite recipes!! I actually made these the week before last to take with us on our vacation! They were so good! I love having fresh homemade bagels! ;-) It's amazing all i've learned since I became gluten free! I think I'm a much better baker and cook since! ;-)

I just came across your recipe. I tried a different recipe and was discouraged, but then found yours, and I'm glad I did. I did modify the recipe a bit based on ingredients I had in the house.

I used a bit less yeast - 2 packets (which is 2 1/4 teaspoons each) instead of 2 Tablespoons - substituted water for the agave nectar and no cider vinegar even though I was using xanthan gum. The dough was not sticky and shaped beautifully. I let the bagels rise 40 minutes before boiling, then boiled for one minute on each side.

Then I topped the bagels with some grated grana padano cheese(similar to asiago or Parmesan) and baked 20 minutes at 400.

These were beautiful! I am so happy to be able to have great tasting bagels again.

Thanks so much for your experimenting that led to this great recipe. I'm newly gluten free and having fun experimenting myself, though it is wonderful to have great recipes to start with.

I got tired of paying $6 for 4 bagels at sprouts even though they are very good.....these turned out great and so easy! I used my Bosch mixture and it was so easy to do and the mixture didn't turn out sticky..just pulsed on the M speed until the dough was mixed well...going to do these again next weekend...thanks Carrie

I've been making batches of these and freezing them for a year now - still can't find any other GF bagel that is as good as these. I make blueberry bagels, but my daughter (who is gluten intolerant) just asked if I could try cinnamon raison for her - so I'll give it a try! Thanks again for the recipe.